Major Research Areas

Upstate boasts basic and clinical researchers with diverse expertise in neuroscience, molecular genetics, genomics, epigenetics, structural biology, infectious disease, and behavior disorders. This allows students the opportunity to perform research in a wide range of research areas and easily collaborate when new expertise is needed.

Education & Fellowships

Research Interests

Publications

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Research Abstract

Mitochondria are the powerhouses that generate energy by oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) to support cellular activities, and are the integrators of cellular signals that promote different forms of cell death. Mitochondria are also known as the "powerhouses of diseases and aging", as mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with a rapidly growing number of aging-related neuromuscular degenerative diseases and metabolic disorders. How the mitochondrial function deteriorates during aging and how this in turn induces cellular degeneration are poorly understood. We use yeast, cultured cell lines and mouse as model systems to address these fundamental questions.

The ongoing research in our laboratory is focused on the following three projects:

(1) We are interested to understand how mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to aging and aging-related diseases.

(2) We are interested to identify evolutionarily conserved pathways that can potentially delay and possibly, reverse mitochondria-induced cellular degeneration.

(3) We investigate the mechanisms of mitochondrial DNA recombination, replication and repair. Elucidating these fundamental processes could help better understanding how the mitochondrial system degenerates during aging.

Zuo, X.M., Clark-Walker, G.D. and Chen, X.J (2002). The mitochondrial nucleoid protein, Mgm101p, of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is involved in the maintenance of rho+ and ori/rep-devoid petite genomes but is not required for hypersuppressive rho- mtDNA. Genetics 160:1389-1400.